Reclaiming India’s role in defeating Nazi Germany

May 06, 2015

Vinay Shukla

An Indian infantry, 7th Rajput Regiment about to go on patrol on the Arakan front in Burma, 1944. Source: wikipedia.org

As the world commemorates the 70th anniversary of the victory over the forces of Nazism on May 9, particularly the Soviet Union’s stellar role in the Great Patriotic War, it would be apt to also remember sacrifices of the valiant Indian soldiers who fought alongside and spilled their blood for that cause.

On May 9, as the world marks the 70th
anniversary of the great Victory over Fascism and Nazi Germany in World War II,
it would be apt to remember sacrifices of the valiant Indian soldiers, who also
spilled their blood to make this possible. India was not an independent
country, yet its soldiers enlisted in the thousands to help the Allied war
effort.

There is no doubt that the greatest
sacrifice in defeating Fascism was made by the Soviet Union, which lost 27
million people in the “Great Patriotic War” against Nazi Germany and liberating
countries of Eastern Europe. This was the bloodiest chapter of the World War II,
in Eastern Europe, which hardly left a single Soviet family unaffected across
the huge nation.

Nazi troops invaded the USSR on June 22,
1941, radically changing the very logic of the war, which had so far been mostly
confined to Europe and North Africa.

Unfortunately, large parts of the common
efforts against the common enemy were wilfully forgotten in the ‘Cold War’
which followed the Great War, between the former allies of the West and the
East.

A largely unsung episode of the joint
collaboration during World War II was Operation
Countenance, the British-Soviet invasion of Iran to secure the Persian
Corridor for unhindered supplies to the Soviet Union by its British and US
allies. Thousands of Indian soldiers took part in this operation which lasted
from August 25 to September 17, 1941, as German Panzers were rolling towards
Moscow.

The British Persia and Iraq force
(Paiforce) was mostly made up of the 8th and 10th Indian
Infantry Divisions, 2nd Indian Armoured Brigade and the 21st
Indian Infantry Brigade. Military convoys driven by Indian drivers delivered
arms and food supplies across Iran into the Soviet Union right up to Beslan
(Russia’s North Ossetia) and present-day Turkmenistan’s Kizyl Arvat. After war
many Indian servicemen and military drivers were decorated with Soviet medals
and orders.

In India, the political discourse about the
assessment of WWII remains mired in the controversy over the ‘Quit India’
movement launched by the Indian National Congress against the British Raj (empire)
by refusing to support the “Imperialist war,” but after the Nazi invasion of
the Soviet Union, the Indian Communists declared it a “People’s war” and
actively mobilised its backing for the British Indian Army.

Communists and Soviet sympathisers joined
the Indian Army in strength, which swelled into the world’s biggest voluntary
army, of 2.5 million people, by the end of World War II in 1945.

One of the leaders of INC, ‘Netaji’ Subhash
Chandra Bose chose the path of siding with the British enemy - Axis of Germany
and Japan and raised the Indian National Army (Azad Hind Fauj) by recruiting
Indians taken as prisoners of war (PoW) by the Japanese. This added another
dimension to the assessment of WWII in the Indian political discourse.

This dissonance has led to ignorance of the
Indian contribution in Allied victory in WWII and India’s claim to a rightful
share in the creation of the post-war world order, including a permanent seat
in the United Nations Security Council.

The dissonance and lack of clarity placed the
then Congress government of Prime Minister PV Narasimha Rao in a dilemma when,
in 1995, Russian President Boris Yeltsin invited him, with other world leaders,
to attend the 50th anniversary celebrations of the victory over Nazi
Germany at Moscow’s Red Square. India
sent the then External Affairs Minister, Pranab Mukherjee, while the western
presence was led by US President Bill Clinton and a galaxy of world leaders.

“Well, this is not exactly our victory,”
was the official Indian position at the time.

However, there is a greater understanding today
of the Indian role and the country’s political elite has been acknowledging the
contribution of the 2.5 million Indians who played a significant role in facilitating
this day of victory in the bloodiest war in Europe.

Prime Minister Manmohan Singh represented
India at the 60th anniversary celebrations of the Victory in the
Great Patriotic War in Moscow in 2005. Ten
years later, on May 9, 2015, Pranab Mukherjee will again represent his country,
this time in his capacity as the President of India.

In a first, President Mukherjee will also
watch 71 Indian Grenadiers marching at the Red Square, alongside Russian armed
forces, during the Victory Day parade to commemorate the 70th
anniversary in Moscow.

This will be seen as a tribute to the 87,
000 Indian military personnel who died in action during WW II, and up 2.5
million civilians who perished in India due to famine and other war related
privations.